Maressa Bruhn

Postgraduate Student

Contact Details

Academic Qualifications

• Bachelor of Biotechnology (Honours)

Research

The Serum and Glucocorticoid Inducible Kinase (SGK) family consists of three distinct but highly homologous isoforms, all of which are activated in a PI3-K dependent manner in response to extracellular stimuli. To date the PI3K/SGK signalling pathway has been implicated in cellular processes such as cell proliferation, ion channel regulation, anti-apoptotic signalling and cell survival, most of which can contribute to cell transformation if deregulated. In addition, all three SGK isoforms share substantial homology with the PKB/Akt family in the catalytic domain and hence in vitro can phosphorylate the same substrates. The cellular processes in which PKB/Akt is involved in, along with its oncogenic potential has been widely documented in the literature, however to date research into the SGK family in tumourigenesis is still very much in its infancy, with most studies focusing on SGK-1. Preliminary studies in our laboratory have shown SGK-3 mRNA expression to be constitutively expressed in a subset of ovarian tumour cell lines, and in addition comparative genomic hybridization data from the Progenetix cytogenetic online database (www.progenetix.net) show a gain in SGK-3 copy number in 24% of ovarian tumours. Consequently my PhD studies will attempt to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the role of SGK-3 in normal cell physiology and its potential role in ovarian tumourigenesis.

Aim 1: To generate the appropriate tools to perform loss- and gain-of-function analysis for SGK1 and SGK3.

Aim 2: To determine the changes in cellular phenotype induced by the manipulation of SGK-3 expression/activity.

Aim 3: To analyse the potential role of SGK-3 in tumourigenesis.

Supervisors

Karen Sheppard

Ross Hannan

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